systems thinking

Unlocking Systemic Change: Reflections on facilitating a Policy Engagement Workshop Applying the Four Keys and PDIA

In today’s complex world, driving meaningful social and policy change requires more than incremental improvements—it demands systemic shifts. In this blog, I describe and reflect on my experience of drawing from a tool from Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation and applied the Four Keys for shifting systems  to facilitate a strategy discussion with policy researchers from […]

Unlocking Systemic Change: Reflections on facilitating a Policy Engagement Workshop Applying the Four Keys and PDIA Read More »

Enhancing Adaptive Development Through Strategy Testing

In the rapidly changing landscape of international development, traditional, rigid approaches often fall short when dealing with complex and evolving environments. This is where adaptive development and systems shifting come into play, allowing practitioners to remain responsive and flexible in the face of uncertainty. A key method that supports this approach is strategy testing, a

Enhancing Adaptive Development Through Strategy Testing Read More »

Systems mapping and actionable insights – Exploring Systems Mapping with Pete Barbrook-Johnson and Alexandra S. Penn

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to dive into an insightful podcast from the series Systems and Cybernetics on the New Books Network. The episode featured an interview with Pete Barbrook-Johnson and Alexandra (Alex) S. Penn, co-authors of the book Systems Mapping: How to Build and Use Causal Models of Systems

Systems mapping and actionable insights – Exploring Systems Mapping with Pete Barbrook-Johnson and Alexandra S. Penn Read More »

My discovery of systems through the words of Jane Jacobs

In 2005, I had been living for over two years, in Kampong Thom, central Cambodia. I was working on community development and local governance participation in local governance in a GTZ (now GIZ) rural development programme. I also worked on my PhD research on education decentralisation and community participation in school management, which I did

My discovery of systems through the words of Jane Jacobs Read More »